In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Amen.
There
was a father and son who had become estranged from each other. The cause of the
estrangement really doesn’t matter, but the rift in the family was real. At the
urging of wife and mother in this family, the father and the son begrudgingly
agreed to go on a fishing trip to patch things up. They got in the car and
spent the three hour drive in awkward silence. Eventually, they arrived at the
river that they had grown up fishing in, but before they could even get the
bait on their lines, the silence had been broken. The argument started over
what sort of bait would be best to use, but at least they were talking to each
other. Somehow, by the grace of God, one of them put their finger on the source
of their estrangement, and their yelling turned into crying, which turned into
a hug of reconciliation. They fished the rest of the day and didn’t catch a
thing. When they got home, a neighbor asked them if they caught anything. They
said “Nope.” And the neighbor said, “So the fishing trip was unfruitful.” This
is a sermon about missing the point.
Today’s
Gospel passage is a rather interesting one, and a bit confusing as well. After
hearing this passage, it seems as if we’ve stumbled into a family fight. What
is all this discussion about clean hands and food rituals? As is often the
case, there is something deeper to this fight than what’s happening at the
surface level. Scholars tell us that Mark likely wasn’t all that familiar with
Judaism, as many of his geographical references in the book aren’t quite right.
And it seems that he misrepresents the meal customs in this passage. There is
no law in the Old Testament about hand washing, and it certainly wasn’t a
practice held in common by all Jews, but rather just by this group of
Pharisees. So it would be easy to get lost in this passage and mistakenly take
it to be about purity laws. If that’s what this was all about, Jesus would have
countered their protest by using that line of argument.
But
he doesn’t. Instead, Jesus says “There is nothing outside a person that by
going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” This isn’t
about rituals or beliefs, proper food handling safety, or even keeping kosher.
For Jesus, this is about the intentions of your heart and the actions of your
life. As James wrote in today’s epistle, “Be doers of the word, and not merely
hearers.” As we all know, rituals can be quite empty if there is no heart
behind them.
Now,
I’m in the business of ritual, so please don’t hear me as disparaging rituals.
Rituals and traditions are wonderful symbols and reminders of who we are called
to be. But history is littered with examples of when religion has become a
pious excuse for subverting the will of God. We can think of the ways in which
people were forced to be Baptized at sword-point during the Crusades, or the
way that today many churches exclude people from marriage – whether that be due
to divorce or sexual orientation. Religion, though is to be an instrument of
God’s grace and revelation, often robs people of their life, liberty, and
pursuit of happiness. Too often, religion misses the point.
When
people, and especially younger generations, leave their faith behind, one of
the top reasons they give for doing so is being fed up with the hypocrisy of
the Church. Or, in other words, they think the Church is missing the point. In
Greek, a hypocrite is an actor on stage; it is someone who wears a mask and
wants you to think they are someone, who, in reality, they are not. Some of you
likely saw an announcement in the newspaper a few weeks ago about a church
safety seminar that was hosted this past week. I didn’t attend, but a Vestry
member did and they reported to me that the seminar consisted of sharing
statistics and arguing that the Bible supports killing our enemies. That is
hypocritical when we consider that Jesus is called the Prince of Peace.
Regardless of your voting record, I hope that we can agree that the current
legislature in North Carolina is eviscerating our public education system and
disenfranchising voters. Given that so many of our elected official
self-identity as Christian, it seems that when it comes to caring for the
“least of these” that a majority of our elected officials hypocrites.
In
a book called The Dream of God, that
I hope that every single Christian will read, Verna Dozier says that the Church
has narrowed its call to transform the world to a call to save the souls of
individuals, and in doing so, has narrowed salvation from a present possibility
to a future fulfillment for people who think certain things. Dozier claims that
Christianity was derailed when it decided to worship Jesus instead of following
him. This isn’t to say that worship is wrong or bad, but worship without
transformation is meaningless; worship without service is blasphemy.
This
is the whole point of the Incarnation, of God coming to us in Jesus. If all God
cared about was being properly worshipped, well, then we didn’t need Jesus to
teach us how to love each other or die on a cross. Jesus came to us and formed
a human connection to the world, showing us that it’s about how we treat each
other that matters most, not what we think about God. Notice that, with the
exception of saying “do this in remembrance of me” about the Eucharist, Jesus
never gives any liturgical instructions. Rarely does Jesus teach theology, but
he has a lot to say about social justice, loving God, and loving our neighbor.
Jesus wanted to make sure that we got the point – “There is nothing outside a
person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what
defile.”
What
comes out of you? There’s a story about Jesus that I really like, though you
won’t find it in the Bible, but I think that’s okay. As the story goes, Jesus
was walking through a village with his disciples and people were hurling all
kinds of insults at him and spitting on him. When they got through the town,
the disciples asked Jesus, “Lord, why didn’t you smite them and strike them?”
And Jesus responded, “I can only give out what I carry in my bag.” If you find
yourself snapping at others, perhaps you’re carrying around some excess
resentment. And I’m sure we’ve all known people who always seem to respond with
grace and love, which is a sign of what lives in their hearts. So again I’ll
ask, what comes out of you?
And
what’s so interesting about this passage is that we are given the
responsibility for what comes out of us. It’s not what goes in that defiles,
but what comes out. A lot of people like to have excuses for the way they are.
They say that the world has made them hard, so they are hard. People blame
their parents, or their bosses, or their enemies, or the circumstances of their
life for their poor decisions. But Jesus will have none of that – what comes
out of your heart is what defiles. And he lists a long series of sins. I won’t
go through them all, but I will mention that this is not an exhaustive list of
sins. If you don’t see your sin of choice on that list, feel free to add it.
Sure, lots of tough stuff comes into our lives, but doesn’t mean that anything
other than love must come out of them.
So,
what is the point? For Mark, the entire Gospel can be summarized by the first
words spoken by Jesus back in chapter one: “The time is fulfilled, and the
kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” The rest
of Mark just expands on that theme. Repent and believe. These words would
actually be better translated as “be transformed” and “trust.” The Gospel is
about transformation – transformation of the world and your view of it.
Transformation though is a word of movement, of actually doing something, of
being doers, and not merely hearers.
But
the issue is that, so often, we are too frightened, too complement, or too lazy
to take part in the Gospel charge and salvation to be transformed. One theologian
has said “It is not that Christianity has been tried and found wanting, it has
been found difficult and left untried.” Soren Kierkegard once wrote a parable
to the people of Denmark, which he saw as full of Christians who didn’t seem to
be very Christian when it came to being doers. Once upon a time, there was a
land inhabited only by ducks. Every Sunday morning, the ducks got up, washed
their faces, put on their Sunday clothes, and waddled off to church. They
waddled through the door of their duck church, proceeded down the aisle, and
took their familiar places in the pews. The duck minister entered the pulpit
and opened the duck Bible to the place where it talked about God’s greatest
gift to ducks – wings. “With wings we can fly. With wings we can soar like
eagles. With wings we can escape the confines of pens and cages. With wings we
can become free. With wings we can become all God meant us to be. So give
thanks to God for your wings. And fly!” All the ducks loudly quacked, “Amen.”
And then all of the ducks waddled back home.
My
brothers and sisters, let us be transformed and be a part of God’s
transformation of this world. There are plenty of hypocrites out there, so let
us encourage and support one another in action. Let us practice the faith that
we profess. And there are some very tangible ways for us to do this. Today is
our kickoff for an upcoming Habitat for Humanity build. Part of the
transformation of this world to reflect the Kingdom of God is ensuring that all
of God’s people have a place to call home. We are blessed with the opportunity
to come together as a community of faith and work with a family in building
their home; we have a chance to physically build a symbol of God’s love in our
community. So be a part of this project. Even if you can’t swing a hammer,
there will be a way for each and every one of you to be a part of this build.
Once
our Youth Group gets kicked off in September, there will be opportunities for
you to be involved. Research has shown us that children and youth who grow up
with a strong faith have more adults than just their parents involved in their
spiritual development. You don’t have to have a dynamic personality to be a
part of youth group, you just have to be willing to show the love of God. You
can cook a meal for a Youth Group meeting, or just show up and let these young
people know that their community of faith cares about them.
Later
this fall, you’re going to get a pledge card in the mail when it comes time for
our stewardship effort. If you want to know if you’re a hearer or a doer, just
look at your bank statements. Your checkbook will tell you where your
priorities are. St. Luke’s is doing amazing things right now and we have
tremendous energy. But we need all hands on deck and all of our members “all
in” to keep the momentum going.
Consider
having a Rule of Life that consists of daily prayer and Scripture reading. This
week, I’m going to be sending the first in a series of monthly emails to our
families with children, giving them tools and suggestions for how to
incorporate practices of faith into our homes. Take this opportunity seriously.
There are a lot of things that, as a priest, I can do for you. I can offer you
guidance, I can do my best to inspire you, I can pray with you, I can visit you
in the hospital, I can celebrate the Sacraments. But I can’t read the Bible for
you, nor can I do daily prayers for you, and I can’t say bedtime prayers with
your children.
This
Gospel passage from Mark is an invitation for us to consider the point of our
faith. It is easy to miss the point, to get bogged down in rituals or to let
faith get stuck instead of our heads instead of having it be alive in our
hearts, mouths, and hands. For Jesus though, what matter most is the
transformation that comes through participation in the present and available
Kingdom of God. The point of faith, as St. James puts it, is not merely hearing
and thinking certain religion things, but is about doing them. I’ll close with
one of my favorite prayers from the Book
of Common Prayer.
Let us pray: Almighty and
eternal God, so draw our hearts to you, so guide our minds, so fill our
imaginations, so control our wills, that we may be fully yours, completely
dedicated to you; and then use us, we pray you, as you will, and always to your
glory and the welfare of your people; through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Amen.
